Quality and Safety

An Intermountain Healthcare study conducted at 27 team-based medical practices and 75 traditional practices revealed that delivering integrated mental and physical healthcare in team-based primary care settings yields better results for patients and also reduces the rates of healthcare utilization and lowers cost.

The hope is that radiology optimization and predictive modeling will pay dividends, with innovations scalable to other health systems.

In pilot testing a new way to compile healthcare information electronically, researchers at the Regenstrief Center for Biomedical Informatics are using HL7's FHIR specification.

Diana E. Bianchi, MD, is leaving Tufts Medical Center in Boston to lead NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

More than 400 Medicare ACOs generated some $466 million in savings, said Patrick Conway, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on August 25. Of those, 125 qualified for shared savings payments by meeting quality performance standards.

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response has awarded $2.6 million to DiaSorin – an Italy-based biotechnology company with offices in Stillwater, Minnesota – to further develop its Zika diagnostic tool.

Florida Department of Health officials say they believe active transmissions are still only happening within the initial one-square mile in Miami-Dade, identified on July 29.

Large employers are taking more control over health care costs and quality by pressuring changes to how care is actually delivered, based on the results from the 2017 Health Plan Design Survey sponsored by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH).

The researchers also found that improving workflow is the top strategy for improving the quality of healthcare technology implementations. 

Many physicians and nurses are traveling across desolate EHR wastelands replete with digital detritus, pixel dust and other non-value-add items.